Lavabit founder launches appeal against website closure

The founder and owner of encrypted e-mail site Lavabit, Ladar Levison, has appealed the US government order that shut down the service last month. However, the details of the order and the closure remain subject to a legal gagging order.

The Texas-based Lavabit mail service, initially planned as an
alternative for Gmail aimed at protecting users’ data, was shut
down August 8. The closure happened about a month after reports
that Lavabit had been used by Edward Snowden to communicate from
Russia.

Levison said in the statement announcing the closure that the
authorities had prevented him from disclosing the reasons for the
closure.

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become
complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from
nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit,”
Levison said. “After significant soul-searching, I have
decided to suspend operations.”

According to court records, details of the case were placed under
a gag order by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Reports emerged,
however, that the court had ordered the Lavabit owner to provide
the government with the website’s private SSL certificate, which
would allow the NSA to wiretap its users.

Over August, Levison raised more than $100,000 to finance the
appeal.

He told RT that he saw a bleak future for secure-data services
such as Lavabit if US government surveillance continues.

“It’s become clear to me over last couple of months that all
of the major providers here in the US have provided our
government with real-time access to private information of their
users,” he said.

“They don’t really have a choice about it and they don’t
really have the ability to tell anybody about it. Fact is, if you
trust your data to a company, even if they haven’t already been
approached and been required to provide access, the simple fact
is they could be in the future, unless that judicial precedent is
set or Congress takes action.”

Levison said he considered the possibility of moving his service
overseas, though he was not yet confident that such an
arrangement could guarantee freedom for his customers from US
spying.

“As an American, if I were to continue running the service,
even if it was physically based in another country, I could still
be required to compromise the security of that system and I could
literally be put in a position where I’m forced to choose between
breaking the laws of the country in which the service is hosted,
or breaking the laws of the United States,” he said.

The appeal is set to be heard October 3, likely in a closed-door
hearing. By law, a redacted version of the proceedings should be
made public.